Saline Valley

Tuesday of the Second Week of Eastertide


He turns a desert into pools of water, a parched land
     into springs of water.
                                            Psalm 107:35




The way to find the real "world" is not merely to measure and observe what is outside us, but to discover our own inner ground. For that is where the world is, first of all: in my deepest self.


                     Thomas Merton. Contemplation in A World of Action

                             In the Saline Valley

                             Night comes in
                             like long
                             blue fingers
                             over the Inyo mountains.

                             We have been soaking in hot spring water
                             in the palm of the desert.
                             We are strangers come from a green place
                             to a dry and stony terrain,
                             where the water is coming out of the earth
                             as balm and prayer.

                             Cool air livens our skin on the walk back to camp
                             beneath the constellations' menagerie
                             burning overhead;
                             the studding shimmer of God
                             spiraling.

                             The rocks causing us to stumble in the dark
                             over the footpaths of our making,
                             our hands useless
                             to steady:

                             their power in the touching
                             the source of the spring;
                             the boundaries of skin
                             over sharp stones;
                             the far eastern sky
                             of love breaking.